APIX reveals first silicon nano-scale gas chromatography device
The firm's GCAPTM targets a range of industrial applications as well as research labs, advanced gas analysis and biomedical screening
Analytical Pixels Technology (APIX) has released its first commercial product: GCAPTM, a gas chromatography device designed for a variety of industrial and petrochemical applications.
These include process monitoring, energy distribution, safety and security and environmental control.
This device, designed, assembled and tested by APIX, is based on nano-scale silicon components licensed from the CEA-Leti and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The silicon components are manufactured in Leti's advanced semiconductor facility in Grenoble and system assembly and test are performed in APIX's facility in Grenoble.
The figure above shows the prototype GCAP-S system utilising GC+NEMS technology developed by APIX and partners. Shown are the system (a), the analytical subsystem with amicro-mechanical 6 port valve, a silicon microfabricated GC column, and a NEMS resonator array (b); and the NEMS control electronics (c). A typical analysis of natural gas from the system is shown (d).
"GCAP's very flexible, versatile architecture, based on high-density silicon columns and sensors, means GCAP can be configured to perform in a number of different modes, including conventional, multi-dimensional or concurrent analysis," says Pierre Puget, APIX co-founder and CTO. "This makes it the ideal tool for research laboratories, advanced gas analysis, and complex applications such as biomedical screening.
"One of GCAP's key features is its ability to work with a number of different carrier gases," Puget continues. "This is made possible by the extreme sensitivity of the silicon nano-scale sensors at the heart of the system."
In particular, the ability of GCAPTM to work with scrubbed air as a carrier gas in lieu of expensive, cumbersome bottled gases allows easy in-situ deployment, nearly real-time analysis, and a significant reduction in operating costs.
Additional major features of GCAPTM include its ability to:
- separate and precisely quantify individual molecules among hundreds of interfering substances, depending on architectural configurations
- limit detection for most chemical compounds below 1 parts-per-million without pre-concentration and in the parts-per-billion range with pre-concentration
- reduce the volume of analyte required to less than 10 microlitres, and the volume of carrier gas to less than 1 millilitre
- analyse most chemicals in less than one minute
The performance of GCAPTM, which is available for beta testing, has been well demonstrated with alkanes, permanent gases, volatile organic compounds and other materials.
APIX will be present at PITTCON 2013 in Philadelphia, US, taking place between March 17th and 21st at Booth #441.
